jasonbuckner.com

I have a fairly long bus ride to work, it typically takes around an hour. Sometimes I like to sleep on the bus, but I'm always scared of missing my stop. With the introduction of iOS 5, Apple added location-based reminders that can be activated with Siri, or manually if you're on an iPhone 4. Location-based reminders don't work on the iPhone 3GS.

My solution is to create a contact just before my bus stop and set a reminder to alert me when I've reached that spot. It's a 2-step process, but it's fairly easy:

Step 1: Create a contact a mile or so before your stop

1. Open the Maps app and drop a pin by touching and holding in one spot until the pin drops.
2. Touch the right arrow and select "Add to Contacts"
3. Name your new contact something easy. I called mine "Mills and 50"

I got my iPhone 4S on launch day and I absolutely love Siri! Unfortunately there is no Twitter or Facebook integration for Siri out of the box. There are some fairly straight forward workarounds, though.

Facebook
To update your Facebook status:

1. Create a new contact in your address book and name it something other than "Facebook". "Facebook" is a reserved word and Siri will tell you it can't interact with it. I named mine "Face".
2. Find your Facebook email address on the Facebook Mobile site and set that as the email address.
3. Now you can just email status updates to Facebook using Siri. Facebook uses the Subject line as the status update.

Twitter
Twitter doesn't have native email updating capability so, instead, use SMS to send Twitter updates:

1. Link your phone to Twitter on the Devices page.
2. Create a new contact in your address book and name it something other than "Twitter" or "Tweet". These are both reserved words for Siri. I named mine "Toot"
3. Set the phone number to 40404.
4. Send a text message to your contact.

As of this writing, the 64-bit Oracle Instant Client segfaults under Lion. There is a fairly lengthy discussion thread on the Oracle support forums and the only solution currently is to use the 32-bit version.

While the problem is fairly easy to overcome if you use the system python, it presents a problem when using virtual environments. For the system Python, simply install the 32-bit Instant Client and tell the system to use the 32-bit python install:

defaults write com.apple.versioner.python Prefer-32-Bit -bool yes

or

export VERSIONER_PYTHON_PREFER_32_BIT=yes

Python in a virtual environment, on the other hand, bypasses the Prefer-32-bit flag and will always run in 64-bit mode. As suggested by Ned Deily on StackOverflow, you can remove the 64-bit binary from the virtual environment python to force it to use 32-bit.

To remove the 64-bit binary, use lipo:

$ which python
/path/to/virtualenv/bin/python
$ file /path/to/virtualenv/bin/python
python: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
python (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
python (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
If you take this approach, you will probably need to reinstall any python libraries like mysql-python with their 32-bit versions. To install mysql-python 32-bit, make sure you are running the 32-bit MySQL server.

Good luck!

I just purchased a GoPro HeroHD and it's a fantastic camera! In order to keep the size small and the weight down, they put a minimal LCD screen on the front. This makes changing the settings a bit more difficult than on a large screen.

To help me remember what all of the abbreviations stand for, I put together a little cheat sheet to print out and keep with you when you need to change settings on the go.

Here's a printable PDF of the commands that fits in a 1/4 sheet of paper. This is what's on the sheet:

No lights and no meat makes Jason something something. Go crazy? Well actually, not at all.

This post is a bit late because I've been spending most of my spare time on a side project, but I finally want to recap our month of no lights or meat.

No Lights

The month started off to some adjustment. Living without light got us into a routine of laying down with the sun. By about 7:30, I was already starting to feel tired, sluggish, and unproductive. This kind of concerned me because I took on a new programming project about halfway through the month and really wanted to work on it until late into the night.

I found that working on the computer with the monitor as my single source of light was really what was causing this problem. In response, I set up my desk with some candles and was able to be quite productive using only a few small peripheral candles. I also found that even having the slightest bit of ambient candlelight in any other room really helped my mood overall.

Cost Savings

I made a spreadsheet of candlelight usage vs. room light usage and the results were pretty positive. Based on my estimations, we use about $7.50/month in lighting and less than $1/month in candles. It's not a huge cost savings, but we live in a pretty small apartment so the savings could be much more in a larger house. Somewhat ironically, our power bill went up from the same time last year because, I believe, we did a lot more stovetop-cooking and baking than we normally do by not eating meat during the month.

No Meat

Living without meat has been a very refreshing experience. Neither of us really miss it and it has made us much more aware of the food we consume. We've started buying food from the food co-op and farmers' market more regularly because we are actually able to finish all of the food we buy before it goes bad.

One of the best things about living without meat is our expanded menu of food. For a long time we got into a rut of making the same things over and over, but this forced us out of our shell and made us explore new things. I've found that you can make almost any traditionally meat food you can imagine with some very tasty vegetarian substitutes.

An interesting side effect of eating no meat is how people react to it. Many aren't sure how to cater to our new diet and it seems to scare some people. We've been more than happy to bring vegetarian dishes to any occasion and I think most people that have tried them have been impressed.

Summary

One of the best lessons I have learned from living without lights is how little artificial light I really need. Sunlight provided almost all the light I really needed and when the sun wasn't out, candles provided all of the necessary light. The two exceptions here are the bathroom and the closet, neither of which have windows. The hardest thing about candlelight in the bathroom is shaving and reading, but every other task is completely doable.

We're trying to stick with no lighting as much as possible, but there are times when we use them just for the time savings. The candles are much dimmer so finding stuff by candlelight is more difficult, but I have really learned to love the glow of the candles.

We're also going to stick with no meat for the foreseeable future. We've found an ample amount of vegetarian meals that satisfy our appetite and feel much better all around because of it. I personally am not going to be strict about it and will eat meat from time to time, but I'm trying to only eat meat when it comes from reputable sources like local farms.

Overall, the experiments during the month of April were a huge success. If for nothing else, it gave us both a new perspective on the things we put in our bodies and the necessity of light. We've got a few more experiments planned coming up, but that's for another post.

TL;DR

Candles provide enough light for most activities and vegetables can replace meat for almost everything except when you get a hankering for a burger. We're sticking with both for the foreseeable future.

It's been two weeks without meat or lights and we're still alive. In fact, I would say this is shaping up to be a pretty awesome month. Before I get into more of an update, I want to answer a few questions people have been asking:

1. For our candlelight experiment, we have not changed anything else except for not using room lights. We still use computers, phones, and electricity.

2. I don't yet have any concrete numbers in terms of money savings or environmental impact of this experiement, but I have started a spreadsheet so I can make an educated guess.

3. We haven't gone vegan, just eliminated meat from our diet. I still drink milk (I don't think I could not drink milk) and eat eggs.

Candlelight
This experiment has been going really well, though there have definitely been times, mainly when I've lost something and can't find it, when I want to turn on the lights. I've been good, though and avoided room lights completely. It's been kind of funny when people come over and having to light the candles to use the bathroom.

The bathroom and the clothes closet are still the biggest problem rooms. There is no outside light in either one and they typically require lighting for their respective purposes. I've missed spots shaving several times and picking out clothes is a bit difficult even under candlelight. Kitzzy yells at me for bringing open candles into the closet (for fear of fire) so I just do it when she's not around.

I've noticed myself trying to put things in consistent locations so I don't have to light a candle to look for them. At the start of the month, I was very quick to light candles for everything, but now I do my best to feel my way around to find what I'm looking for. It's been working well so far.

Another big change I've noticed is trying to get as much done as possible before the sun goes down. While candlelight helps, there's some things, like working on my bike, that I need more light for. The same goes for making dinner. I try to finish dinner as quickly as possible so I'm not trying to make it by candlelight.

Vegetarian
Speaking of making dinner, vegetarian month is going great too! The amount of varied food we've been eating is fantastic. When we were eating meat, we would pretty much make the same meals over and over. Now, maybe because we're new to this, we've made a bunch of unique and tasty meals.

We've been making a lot of chilies. They are incredibly easy to make and you can pretty much just add any combination of beans, vegetables, and spices and you're good to go. Last Monday we made a huge pot full of chili and a tempeh stir fry and these lasted us almost all week.

My two favorite dishes so far have been Sweet Potato Burritos and the Shepherd's Pie. Tonight we made sweet potato raviolis that came out very good, but the amount of work required didn't justify the result.

As far as its effect on my body, I've been on a few very fast bike rides and I've been able to keep up so I think I'm getting enough protein. There was a few days where I felt sluggish when I shouldn't have and I was contemplating my diet being a factor, but overall my body seems to be adjusting well to this.

Overall, April is turning out pretty cool. I think after the month is over, we'll probably start using some lights again, maybe just the closet at first. I think we might stick with vegetarianism for awhile longer. We've found some awesome new meals and I haven't noticed any adverse effects on my training. Veg On!

April is proving to be quite the month for new experiences. I posted recently about Kitzzy and I going candlelight-only for a month and this week we decided to go vegetarian for the month as well.

How did this decision get made? Well we've been talking about trying this for sometime now so the idea of doing it wasn't too much of a surprise. Secondly, I recently watched Food, Inc. and I started to wonder how the meat we buy has made its way to our table. I know I've been eating this same meat for a long time, but to see the conditions needed to provide a large country with enough meat to feed everyone, animal factories make meat look much less appetizing.

I'm not opposed to meat, but I've tried to buy meat that's free-range and sustainable and have spent much more than I care to on it. So instead of spending a fortune on meat, this is a great opportunity to learn how to fulfill my dietary needs during a busy training season with no meat.

Somehow this managed to coincide with me being the chef for the month so I'm getting to learn some really good vegetarian recipes.  The first one I made was just a tofu stir fry. This was lacking in flavor and in general was just poorly executed. I'm not a big fan of tofu, mostly because of the texture.

The second meal I made was a vegetarian shepherd's pie that replaced the meat with a lentil and pearl barley mixture. This came out fantastic! I was blown away by how tasty this was and encouraged that I could make a protein-rich vegetarian meal without tofu.

My third meal was a vegetarian meatloaf that used lentils and quick oats instead of meat. This was good, but not as good as the shepherd's pie. I think it just needed some extra spices.

Well I'm looking forward to the rest of the month and learning to cook some great new food. This should be a lot of fun and who knows, maybe we'll keep this up for longer than the month.

Last week I posted about our plans to go without artificial light for a month. Well we're a week in and it has been going surprisingly well!

Bathroom shelf

I finally got all of our needed shelves put up in the kitchen and bathroom so we could have more candlelight around. The tape on the light switches is still keeping us honest from time to time, though I've noticed myself reaching for the switch less and less.

The hardest part about this so far has been shaving.  It seems no matter how many candles I put around me, it's still kind of difficult to really see where you're shaving.

My candlestick after 1 week

One of the best parts about this has been that we open the windows much more now since the candles don't put out a lot of light. We need as much supplemental light as possible and it's also nice having sunlight instead of fluorescent light.

I still haven't covered the aquarium light, but I'm shortening the photoperiod (it needed to be shortened anyway) so the lights shut off at 7pm instead of 9pm. This will give us more of the evening without lights to make this more realistic.

I'm very optimistic abut the rest of the month and can see this going on for longer than the month. There have been times, particularly if I've lost something and need to find it, that I've wanted to turn the lights on, but I've managed pretty well without them.

On Saturday night, Kitzzy and I had an Earth Hour game night and BBQ to which no one showed up. But that's okay; we played the Game of Life, then sat around in a candle-lit room for awhile and talked. It wasn't so bad sitting in the near darkness, so we decided we would try it for a month.

Starting today, we're going to go for a month using almost only candle-light. I say almost because there's a few things we can't shut off, such as my aquarium, and other things we just decided to leave, like the refrigerator light and Kitzzy's alarm clocks that gradually increases the light to wake you up. Everything else is off.


I put masking tape over all of the light switches to help alleviate the accidental turn-ons from the habit of turning on the switch when entering the room. This has already helped a lot for the cause.

Kitzzy has a bunch of candles and accessories from when she used to do Party Lite so we got all of that stuff from her parents. I wanted a candle to carry around, a la Victorian England so we went to IKEA and I picked up a candle holder and some more candles. Kitzzy says if I had a stocking cap, I'd look like Ebenezer Scrooge carrying this around.

I'm very much looking forward to the next month. I like the glow that candles give a room much more than artificial lighting. I'm looking forward to seeing how different life is without artificial lighting and how to adapt to it.

I'm going to attempt to limit the amount of light my aquarium gives off to the room, but that's a difficult thing to do. At some point, I would like to make a cost comparison of using candles to using lights, but I won't know enough about candle costs for a week or two.

I am not a runner. I've complained every step of the way to getting into running. But now I think I'm addicted.

In early 2008, Kitzzy was starting to get into running so I decided to run the 5k races that she did, but I didn't do any running in between the races. Eventually, she signed up for a 10k with her dad and my dad decided to do it. Well I couldn't let my dad show me up.

I signed up for the 10k and knew I would actually have to train for it so I started running on a somewhat regular basis. I still didn't like running after the 10k, so Kitzzy talked me into training for a triathlon. I like biking and swimming much more, and suffered through the run portion.

In 2009, I did several triathlons, including an Olympic distance at the end of the year. At the end of triathlon season, Kitzzy had started talking about running a marathon the following February. I eventually, yet still reluctantly, decided to train with her.

Starting in November 2009, I started on a pretty regular training schedule. I followed the training program that Kitzzy did with her Galloway group, but I just ran on my own. At some point in the last four months of training, I started to enjoy it.

I'm still not totally sold on marathon-distance runs, but I actually quite enjoy half-marathon distance and below now. Maybe after I finish my first marathon at the end of the month, I'll feel differently about that distance.

I'm now looking forward to triathlon season this year and hopefully now that I have my running base, I'll do a half ironman triathlon by the end of 2010.

Okay, maybe I am a runner.

One of my assinments in my ASL class was to go to a mall and act as though I was deaf, trying to communicate completely through sign and gestures. Kitzzy and I were going to the Prime Outlet mall near the Mall of Millenia on Saturday so I figured it'd be a good opportunity. Kitzzy knows some sign language, enough for us to get by chatting back and forth in the mall. This was a great learning experience for me and it was fun, frustrating and thought-provoking.

I noticed a few things right off the bat that I hadn't expected. For one, it was easy for me to turn off my voice, but I had a much harder time turning off my hearing. In the first shop we went to, I was looking at some clothes and one of the sales people came up behind me and asked if I needed some help. Of course my natural reaction was to just turn around and say no, and just after I did that, I realized that killed my opportunity to act deaf. Similarly I kept telling Kitzzy to turn off her voice so I wouldn't be tempted to look at her when she talked to me.

It took us about 30 minutes before we were finally able to get into the no-voice/no-hearing groove and once we did, it was actually kind of neat walking around signing to one another. Walking around the mall, I noticed we were getting a lot of looks. It felt like a lot of people were watching us sign.

Our signing, while not 100% accurate, was actually pretty understandable and we almost never had to speak to clarify what we were saying to each other. I think the mall is a good setting for this exercise since there's a lot to look at and talk about there. I might try this at Disney some day.

One thing we did find difficult was walking and signing. There were a lot of people there and avoiding obstacles like support columns and kiosks was quite a task while we were busy looking at and signing to one another. Several times we stopped and stood off to the side to finish talking before we started walking again.

The first store where I talked to someone was the Pearl Izumi Outlet. They sell mostly sports-clothing and I was looking at some cycling shoes. I tried to ask the salesman about two of the shoes and found myself asking more of a "which one do you like better?" and me holding up two of them. He was polite, but I was a bit nervous so I didn't talk to him as much as I would've liked to.

After visiting a few more shops, we made it to the food court and went to Tropical Sensations, a sandwich and smoothy place. We stood there for awhile looking at their menu and signing back and forth about what we wanted to eat. We pretty successfully communicated to one another what we wanted and I went up to order. I think the guy working at the register realized we were deaf and was ready for us. As soon as I started ordering, he just handed me a sticky note and motioned to write down what I wanted. This was a bit anticlimactic since I was really hoping to try explaining my order with gestures.

One thing I started thinking about during the experience is how often do hearing people imitate deaf people for things less honorable than academic pursuits. I would say I could've probably done this without knowing much sign language at all since communicating with the salespeople was more focused on visual descriptions than detailed conversation.

I had a wonderful experience doing this and I may try it again in the future. I think having another person with me was beneficial because we could sign together and worse comes to worse, I can have them be my interpreter or vice-versa. I think this was a great exercise and really gave me a good perspective to see part of the world through the eyes of a deaf person.

We've been talking about riding all the way to Wekiva Springs for awhile and finally decided on a date to do it. Tim, Kitzzy, and I left our place at about 7:15am, rode up the Cady Way and Cross Seminole Trail to meet Lisa, Joe, and James at the Townhouse Restaurant in Oviedo.

Our goal was to get to Wekiva by 11, but that was a bit optimistic. We got to the Townhouse at about 8:20, ran into Pete, and after a bit of a tire problem on Lisa's bike, got back on the trail by about 8:45. We took a break at Soldier's Creek Park and Tim, James, and I did a round on the trail.

From Soldier's Creek, the Cross Seminole Trail took us north where we crossed over I4 in Lake Mary, then got on the Seminole Wekiva Trail to head south to Wekiva Springs. I underestimated how far north it took us and it was about 12 miles from there to get to the springs.

Those springs were absolutely wonderful! Cold? Yes. Awesome? Yes. We barbecued some hot dogs and hamburgers and swam around. It was such a great reward after a long, hot ride! Overall we rode 46.47 miles and it took us 3 hours, 46 minutes to complete. (12:31 mph average)

We had an awesome SAG car (Chastity) who drove up and brought all our gear. I had considered riding back, but needed to get some work done so we all loaded up our bikes on the car for the ride back.

I had a great time and I'm really looking forward to doing this again. I think we need to give ourselves more time and overestimate our ETA next time, but overall this was a great trip!

I volunteered to be a walking guide for the American Council of the Blind at the Watermelon 5k. This was an incredible experience! The ACB is having their national conference in Orlando and a bunch of the members wanted to run the race. We each got assigned a partner and led them through the race.

The course was very crowded, over 3300 people, which made running a bit of a luxury. It took us 6 minutes just to cross the starting line! I was expecting to be walking the whole time but Donna, my partner, wanted to run. It took us about a mile just to get a clear enough to get some run time in.

The first mile and a half was a little shaky, mostly because of the crowds and just us getting acquainted to each others' leading and following style. Fortunately for me, she was a very good follower and was able to react quickly to changes. It was a following style that made you be a good leader. It reminded me a lot of leading and following in swing dancing and I told her she must be a good dancer. :)

We were able to do a 9:30 pace at times! I can't imagine trying to run that pace with someone leading me.

This was an incredible learning experience! There were just so many things you had to be conscious of in order to lead another person, especially at such a fast pace. Things you normally take for granted like small dips in the road and bumps. She couldn't see those and relied a lot on my cues, but held her own very well.

I had a great time and will definitely be volunteering to do this again. I just hope the next time, the race is a bit less crowded. It would've made this much more enjoyable.

The day finally came for triathlon number two. I felt good going into it, except for the run part. I've been running pretty regularly, but not more than 2.5 miles at a time. Since training with Dominick and regular swims at Lucky's Lake, I've felt much more confident about my swimming.

I placed 11th out of 19 competitors in my age group and 86th out of 363 overall. My time was actually 5 minutes less than my first triathlon, yet the swim part was 350 meters longer. I'd say it was a good improvement. :)

The Goods:

• Swim (750 m): 11 minutes 33 seconds
• Transition 1: 2 minutes 21 seconds
• Bike (13.27 miles): 37 minutes 59 seconds (avg 21.83 mph)
• Transition 2: 1 minute 16 seconds
• Run (2.59 miles): 21 minutes 21 seconds (avg 8.14 min/mile)
• Total: 1 hour 14 minutes 31 seconds

The Swim (aka The Weed Garden)

If you've never had to wade through 4 foot tall weeds, you haven't lived! Lake Baldwin has an incredibly dense weed forest reaching from shore to probably 100 feet out. In fact it's probably like that the entire way, but 100 feet is about where I lost sight of it. Every time I pulled some off of me, plenty more came to take its place. Not the most pleasant part of the swim.

The swim itself went great once we got past the bulk of the weeds. It took a little while to get out of the main pack of swimmers to avoid getting kicked. I lost some time just trying to get out of the pack, but I tried to draft people to make the swim a bit easier. It didn't feel like 750 meters, I think because it's split up into 3 pieces and I usually just swim out and back at Lucky's Lake.

The Bike Ride (or "Oh shit, how many laps have I done?")

The bike ride went great. I wore my camel pack so I didn't really have to slow down to drink water. We rode 5 laps around Lake Baldwin and it's surprisingly difficult to count to 5 when you're exerting that much effort. I had the GPS with me so I just watched the mileage on it, but I ended up having to do math in my head to figure out my lap.

Going around in circles like that you get good at staying to the right and passing on the left. I saw one accident that took both racers out and I heard of several others happening. I felt like I was going so fast until some of those guys with their triathlon bikes went flying past me. It gave me something to aspire to. :)

The Run (or "Are my legs still working?")

The run was just sort of run on adrenaline. I haven't been training nearly enough at running as I have with biking and swimming and I really felt it out there. The pace was still pretty good, but I want to start track training and running intervals. I think that will help a lot.

I was having some chest pains during the run so I think I want to go see a doctor and get a physical and a stress test. The last physical I had was several years ago, long before I started getting into shape. I'd like to see the difference.

What's Next?

I have the triathlon bug. To see that your body is capable of this and not dying is pretty encouraging and intense. I want to do an Olympic distance triathlon before the end of the season. I'm going to start doing some more formalized training with the running and the bike. I've been training somewhat formally at the pool, but with the run I just do a lap at UCF twice a week. I do a lot of biking, but no real structured intervals, but I have been working Fartleks into my commute.

Muddy Buddy: Take 1

Caleb and I finally got to do the Muddy Buddy. As some of you know, we tried to do it last month in Orlando, only to be rear-ended at the last minute, taking us out of the race.

Well we decided to have another go at it and signed up for the Atlanta one. This time we chose a better theme for our costume. Our last costume was The Rickrollers which, while fun, was pretty lame by any standards.

Muddy Buddy: Take 2

This time we chose the name Super Muddy Bros. and dressed up as Mario and Luigi. At the very last minute, we decided to make a Yoshi head and tail and attach it to the bike. The costumes came out awesome and the Yoshi bike looked amazing! We won first prize in the costume contest :)

The Ride Up With No AC

So besides the costumes being pretty epic, the ride up and back was pretty awesome. We took Caleb's car, a Jetta TDI that gets awesome gas mileage (45+ mpg). Unfortunately, his AC isn't working at the moment and the weather on the ride up was, less than optimal. We tried every combination of opening windows to see how we got the best airflow through the car, but it was always pretty damn hot.

We talked about building a makeshift air-conditioner out of a cooler, ice, and a battery-powered fan. We ended up building this device at a Wal-Mart we stopped at, but it couldn't produce enough air to cool the car down.

The solution to our AC problems came in the form of ice in a hat. It makes for a great AC! You just put ice in your hat and even though it's totally hot out, you don't really care.

So anyway, onto the Muddy Buddy. I started the run portion so I ended up having 3 running and 2 biking sections.

The Course

We had 4 obstacles, each one in between a run-bike tradeoff. The first obstacle was a balance beam. This should not be this difficult, but after running over a mile over hilly terrain, your feet do not want to cooperate in anything that requires balance. Fortunately I got to ride the bike after this.

The second obstacle was crawling under a net. This is where I wish I didn't wear my Mario hat. It kept getting caught on the net so I had to do this weird sideways motion to get through it. Then it was time to run again.

The third obstacle was a short rock climbing wall. It was only about 8 feet tall, but once again, after running on hilly terrain, any rock climb is intense.

The final obstacle was a 15 foot tall inflatable cargo net with a slide on the other side. The cargo net started about 4 feet off the ground so just to get onto it, you had to just jump and pull yourself up. I was pretty destroyed at this point so this was rather difficult to do.

Finally the mud pit. I got to the end a few minutes before Caleb showed up and a bunch of us were just standing there waiting for our partners. Once Caleb got there, we got down in the mud pit and just crawled. The mud was so nice and cool. Just what we needed after that race.

This was an absolutely amazing event and I really want to do it again next year. I think we need to step up the costumes for next year. How? I don't know, but we'll think of something.

About a month ago, Kitzzy told me about this event called the Firefighter Challenge. I've done a bunch of foot races and this sounded fun and different. I also thought it'd be kinda cool to see what my dad and grandpa did for a living. I went ahead and signed up.

The event consisted of five parts and participants went two at a time. The first part was a labyrinth that you crawl through. It was a covered tube with a bunch of obstacles and low-hanging tops. Even crawling really low, my back hit the top of the box and scraped it up pretty good.

We then had to run around a cone, grab a charged firehose, and drag it about 100 feet. Those firehoses are surprisingly heavy when filled with water, but the nozzle is pretty awesome and they move some serious water! Once we got the hose to the end, we had to knock over two cones.

Next we had to drag a firesled about 100 feet. This simulates dragging a person out of a building. A firesled is a sled loaded with weight, about 100lbs, with two straps to hold on to. It also has this rubber-band device that simulates knocking out the roof from a building. We dragged the sled backwards, which really does a number on your calves, and had to use the roof-knocker 5 times. This was surprisingly difficult.

Finally, we had to put on a firefighter airpack and run up 14 flights of stairs to the top of the Rosen Hotel on International Drive. This was crazy. I felt very dizzy at one point going up and could not catch my breath for nearly a half hour afterwards. I don't know why running up stairs is so incredibly difficult, but this was harder than just about any run I've done.

This entire event only last 5:53 for me, but it felt much, much longer. There were some firefighters that did this in full gear, and a few people that did it twice! I have a newfound respect for firefighters and am glad I got to experience this. I *might* do it again if I can train a LOT more before the next one.

As I expected, my summer got incredibly busy so my site updates have slowed.

I'm taking a sign language class, training for a triathlon, working, and doing some freelance work at the moment. Unfortunately this has put a premium on my time and I realize there's not enough hours in the week. Not too big of a deal, but updates to this site may suffer for a little while.

Once June is over, hopefully my schedule will free up a bit and I can start making some cool stuff again.

A few weeks ago we were at Hamburger Mary's, a faaaabulous hamburger shop in downtown Orlando. They were selling these Golden Tickets to promote the opening of the Plaza Cinema Cafe, a new movie theater opening downtown. The tickets included movie, food, and a cocktail, but the best part was that they were going to show the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!

Kitzzy, Tim, Chas, and I all bought tickets. Well then we got word that the theater was not yet ready and they pushed the opening date back a week. Well guess what: Willy Wonka wasn't available the following week. Bah! At least they were showing another movie I wanted to see.

So today was the only day I was going to to be able to go because I have class on Mondays and Wednesdays. I dropped the car off at the Chrysler dealership this morning because it needed a controller replaced. I got the phone call that the car was ready around 3 and they asked me if I needed a ride back to the Chrysler dealership. I had to work on some stuff, so I said no and I was going to catch a ride with a friend of mine.

Well she ended up getting caught up in some work so we ended up leaving kinda late. Still, not a problem, the movie didn't start till 7 and it was only 6. I get to the Chrysler dealership, pay, and they bring around the car. The dashboard of the car has every warning light turned on, the tacometer, speedometer, and gas gauge all read 0. To put it shortly, it was worse than when I brought it in. Fail Chrysler, once again. I'll save the Chrysler rant for another post.

So at this point it's already 6:45 and the Chrysler guy is giving me a ride home. I've pretty much given up on seeing the movie and now feel like I've wasted $15 on this ticket. Kitzzy needs the car tomorrow and it's just up in the air what's going on.

I know there's a bright side of this story, hence the title, I'm just hoping for sooner than later.

I added a time machine! Over there on the left is a little slider. Slide it. Pretty cool, huh?

I'm going to try to keep regular intervals of CSS and design updates and I needed a good way of showing them off. I'll probably tweak it over time.

I'm trying to update the site with some consistency, even if in small bits so I can keep myself motivated to finish it. I did a little bit of work in Illustrator to add some color to the header. So far I like the direction that it's going.

I need to set up some sort of blog because updating in HTML is going to get old (and unmanageable) quickly. I'm going to try to get that in this weekend and pull in some other content.

For a long time I've left my website no more than a blank page with a few links on it. I haven't had the motivation to put up a new site mostly because I don't know the direction I want to go with it. I've done several Photoshop mockups of the way I think I want the site to look, but by the time I get close to being finished, I start to hate the design and I end up back at square one.

I was finally asked about my website recently and why it was so boring and bland and I started to realize that I need a better presence. I had an idea this time of how to keep myself motivated: Don't try to finish it all at once.

I'm going to evolve this site over time. My first revision is pretty much just a sketch I did on my clipboard, I scanned and cutout in Photoshop and pretty much nothing else. I don't know what direction this is going to take and I'm kind of excited to see where this ends up, but over time I plan to keep adding to the site and setup a historical timeline of designs so you can jump back to almost any point in time.

This tip is posted everywhere, but for my love of copying and pasting, here's how to find any text in a directory of files quickly from the command line:

find . -name "*.php" -print | xargs grep "text_to_find"

To break this down:

find . -name "*.php" -print finds all files in the current or sub-directories that has the filename *.php and print out the file name

| This is the pipe. It sends the output of the above find command to the next command:

xargs takes the input from the find command and passes those files to the next command:

grep "text_to_find" searches in each of the files for the text "text_to_find"

Trackballs seem to be a sensitive subject when it comes to computer users. When I mention to people that I use trackballs regularly, I typically get a face of disgust. The usual excuses are: "I can play games 10 times faster with my regular mouse!" or "Trackballs are so awkward!"

For me, I've never found a mouse that gives me the level of control when working in Photoshop or doing any precision work as I have with my trackball. But I don't use just any trackball. Most trackballs have a tiny ball that you maneuver with your thumb, which is totally awkward for me. The rest have a tiny center-mounted ball that's just not large enough to really get any precise control out of.

My trackball of choice is the Kensington series with the large center-mounted ball. Over the years I've owned the Turbo Mouse, Expert Mouse, and as of recently, their new Slimblade.

I was selected to be part of their Slimblade testing program so they sent me one to review and I absolutely love the design of this thing! It's low profile, feels very well-built, and the color scheme is gorgeous.

They've moved the mouse lasers to the side walls so dust doesn't build up inside of it, and they made the ball bearings even smoother than the Expert Mouse.

Scrolling About.

One of the greatest features of the Expert Mouse was the scroll wheel. It was an incredibly intuitive and elegant solution for the lack of scrolling on the Turbo Mouse. The Slimblade took a different approach. They decided to remove the scroll wheel and let you just spin the ball to scroll. I was very skeptical about spinning the ball causing the cursor to move a lot, but it's actually pretty stable during scrolling. It does take some getting used to compared to the scroll wheel, but after a few days it felt very natural. The mouse cursor does move around slightly when scrolling, but overall it's pretty stable.

Ergonomics.

I waited to write this part because I wanted a longer experience with the mouse. At first it was very uncomfortable. The way my hand sat on the Expert Mouse was tilted slightly to the right. When I did that on the Slimblade, since my hand is sitting on the desk instead of the cushion, that hits a pressure point in my hand and it kinda hurt. I seem to have either adjusted my grip or it went away because I don't notice that anymore. I think they really should've shipped this with a wrist rest to help with this problem.

The Software.

One of the things I've always liked about the Kensington trackball series has been the quality of driver software. The previous versions were infinitely customizable, being able to make any button do anything you want. You could even assign multi-click actions so hitting the left and right buttons simultaneously would trigger an event.

The Slimblade has, unfortunately, strayed from this path. In fact the only way you even know the software is installed is a menubar icon. The buttons are all preset functionality: Left-Click, Right-Click, View Mode, and Media Mode. In the two weeks or so that I've been using this mouse, I really haven't found myself using either View or Media Mode.

Media Mode (upper left button) lets you control iTunes. If you use iTunes and don't already use hotkey apps like SizzlingKeys or Synergy, this is nice. I listen to Pandora much more than iTunes lately so this button isn't all that useful for me.

View Mode (upper right button) lets you zoom and pan in apps that are supported. For some apps, like Photoshop, this is useful, yet for other apps, like Safari, not so much. This mouse is very sensitive so it's hard to avoid zooming while you're panning around. I don't think this mode adds a lot of value and I would really like to be able to change the behavior of this button.

Overall, there is almost no customizability in the software and the customization options you are given require editing a text file. Not cool, Kensington. Not cool.

Final Thoughts

If this was my first interaction with Kensington trackballs, I don't think I'd be as much of an enthusiast as I am. The software is severely lacking and the ergonomics really leave something to be desired. If Kensington improves the software and starts shipping this mouse with a wrist rest to match the angle of the mouse, it will be a dream come true, but in it's current form, it feels unfinished.

I'm learning Python right now and one of the things that I thought was strange behavior was how, when you first imported a module in the shell, it would essentially be cached for the rest of your shell session. Any changes you made to your class file would not be reloaded until I exited the shell and reopened it.

There is a much simpler way to reload your class file, using the reload() command: reload(module) It would be nice if there were a 'development' mode where it never cached the class files while you were in the shell. Any suggestions?

I love SafariStand. I love SafariStand's ability to organize downloads by date. I hate trying to navigate to the current day's download directory via the terminal. I typically don't delete downloads very often so my Downloads folder tends to get cluttered with a bunch of folders titled '2009-03-11', '2009-03-15', etc.

If you're a heavy terminal user, it can be a pain to get into the current day's folder because tab-completion always stops at '2009-03-' if your folder spans just one month, '2009-' if it spans multiple months, or '200' if it spans multiple years.

I decided to rectify this situation by making an alias to the date command to generate the current date in the same format. It's pretty simple:

In your .profile or .bash_profile file in your home directory simply add the line:

alias today='date "+%Y-%m-%d"'

Then when you're in the terminal, go to your downloads folder and type

cd `today` (note the back quotes around today) (the back quote is shift-tilde)

and it will automatically generate the proper date string and take you right into your folder.

This holiday season is turning out to be an active one. Tim and Chastity had their house broken into a few days ago and this has sped up their process of moving closer downtown. They found this nice little apartment about 1 block away from Lake Eola, a very nice part of downtown. As luck would have it, the place that they found had 1 more open apartment.

Kitzzy and I have been passively talking about downsizing and moving downtown, but haven't really acted upon it. This sorta kicked us into gear and we went and applied for it. It's $350 less than our current place and the area is much nicer. We're going to have to get rid of a lot of stuff and in all likeliness get a storage unit, but I think it will be a good move.

Since we've been more active, downtown is a much more bike and pedestrian-friendly area. The area got a walk score of 86 compared to the 17 we have now.

The downside is we will be further from UCF so it'll be more of a commute to work. It's an hour bus ride so I can still ride my bike and just catch the bus the rest of the way. We can see I4 down the street so even driving to work should be quick. Eventually I'd like to build up to riding my bike the whole way.

On that note, I think I'm going to be selling my car. I don't really use it that much and living down I will probably use it even less. It's still in decent running shape and I'd like to rid myself of that $70/month insurance.

We're going to be heading out of town in a few days, visiting my dad and stepmom in Georgia, then flying out to California for New Years and MacWorld Expo. It ought to be a fun time. We're flying into LA, spending a few days, then driving up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. I've heard it's an absolutely beautiful drive so I should be posting a lot of pictures.

We rode about 20 miles today and I'm beat. Time for bed.

Here's a quick way to create and add ssh keys to a server:

1. Generate your ssh key on your client machine:
   ssh-keygen -t dsa Note: Set a password for your key. (see note)
2. Secure Copy (scp) the key to your ssh server:
   scp .ssh/id_dsa.pub username@server.com:.ssh/id_dsa.pub
3. Add the key to your authorized_keys2 file:
   ssh username@server.com 'cat .ssh/id_dsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys2'
4. Shortcut: Combine steps 2 and 3:
   cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh username@server.com 'mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2'

Note on SSH Key Passwords

On step 1, you have the option to add a password to your key. If you don't add a password and someone gets ahold of your private key, they will be able to access any server that you have given that key access to. By setting a password, the user still has to know your key password to use it. Though the purpose of this tutorial is to speed up and secure your login, you will still have to type in that password you set in step 1 every time you log in to an ssh server. This is where SSH Keychain comes into play.

SSH Keychain on the Mac

Leopard has this functionality built into the Keychain, but if you are on 10.4 or older, you can use SSH Keychain on the Mac to manage your SSH passwords. This great little app lets you store your ssh passwords in your computer's Keychain so you're not constantly having to type it in. Download it at http://www.sshkeychain.org/ and add your keys to it.

Why Use SSH Keys Anyways?

When you log into an SSH server , you have to send your password over the network at least once. Any network traffic can be potentially captured and, given a long enough time span, decrypted.

SSH keys work on the principle of Public Key Cryptography, which is beyond the scope of this article. In general it allows the server to verify who you are based on this key trust you just set up. Since your keys are cryptographically strong (usually 1024+ bit), it's much more difficult to hack than a short, memorable password.

Multiple Users

SSH keys also allow you to give multiple users access to a single account on your SSH server by simply adding everyone's keys to the single account.

For more in-depth information on SSH keys, see Authentication by Cryptographic Key by O'REILLY.

Steps for successful Mac cleaning: